Local hero

It's well worth watching this video for a bit of ordinary heroics. It's noteworthy for how little attention the episode, in which he could well have just saved a young life, gets from the other people in the shopping centre.

This is the end....surely

Sex and the City 2 Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes

As I expected, the movie is attracting aggressively bad, and somewhat funny, reviews.

For example, the Salon review notes this about the marriage of "Carrie" and "Big":

Big yearns to lie on the $12,000 leather couch, get fat on takeout food and watch the Weather Channel on his new flat-screen TV -- the character seems to have bypassed his 50s and gone straight to supper-at-Denny's age since the first SATC film -- but through various forms of time-honored feminine coercion Carrie extorts diamond jewelry out of him and drags him to restaurants and red-carpet premieres night after night. Oh, the suffering! They're like the wounded couple in Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage," except with millions and millions of dollars and no souls. When Carrie asks Big, "Am I just a bitch wife who nags you?" I could hear all the straight men in the theater -- all four of us -- being physically prevented from responding.

And that's one of the milder passages from becomes an increasingly savage review.

Surely it's the end of the "franchise".

Conspiracies continue

U.S. Is a Top Villain in Pakistan’s Conspiracy Talk - NYTimes.com

Conspiracy theory is a national sport in Pakistan, where the main players — the United States, India and Israel — change positions depending on the ebb and flow of history. Since 2001, the United States has taken center stage, looming so large in Pakistan’s collective imagination that it sometimes seems to be responsible for everything that goes wrong here.

“When the water stops running from the tap, people blame America,” said Shaista Sirajuddin, an English professor in Lahore....

“People want simple explanations, like evil America, Zionist-Hindu alliance,” said a Pakistani diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the delicate nature of the topic. “It’s gone really deep into the national psyche now.”

One of those pundits is Zaid Hamid, a fast-talking, right-wing television personality who rose to fame on one of Pakistan’s 90 new private television channels.

He uses Google searches to support his theory that India, Israel and the United States — through their intelligence agencies and the company formerly known as Blackwater — are conspiring to destroy Pakistan.

Creator of many worlds

CultureLab: The many-worlds physicist couldn't cope with this one

I've mentioned a fascinating fact about Hugh Everett III here before, and now there is a full biography out about him, his theory, and his sad personal life. Sounds like I should read it.

Be the first to find that hidden alien presence

Moon Zoo

That's my plan, anyway.

Parasite of the day

Dangerous lung worms found in people who eat raw crayfish

I'm not sure why Americans would be eating raw crayfish in the first place (sushi-mi, maybe?), but it can cause a serious parasite infection.

The half-inch, oval-shaped parasitic worms at the root of the infection primarily travel from the intestine to the lungs. They also can migrate to the brain, causing severe headaches or vision problems, or under the skin, appearing as small, moving nodules.

Some of the patients had been in and out of the hospital for months as physicians tried to diagnose their mysterious illness and treat their symptoms, which also included a buildup of fluid around the lungs and around the heart. One patient even had his gallbladder removed, to no avail.

It also happens in Asia:

Paragonimiasis is far more common in East Asia, where many thousands of cases are diagnosed annually in people who consume raw or undercooked crab that contain Paragonimus westermani, a cousin to the parasite in North American crayfish.

Travellers beware, I guess.

The main question

Crop circle season arrives with a mathematical message - This Britain, UK - The Independent

I find it hard to believe that there is anything mysterious behind crop circles, but the big question to my mind remains: why does it seem that crop circle makers are never (or rarely) caught in the act?

Doesn't seem fair

I fought the squirrel… and the squirrel won | Science | The Guardian

According to this brief article, which indicates squirrels in England can be just as invasive as rats in Australia:

Woods says that more and more people are buying traps from him. "However, it's illegal to re-release squirrels into the wild. So if you use a live trap, you need to kill the squirrel yourself and the only legal ways of doing that are shooting it with an air rifle, or putting it in a sack and hitting it on the head."

What's wrong with release? Although grey squirrels are an invasive species there, I thought scientists now thought they weren't causing much harm.

And I see that pro-grey squirrel activists now have their own website. How nice.

Psychiatric disorder of the day

People who are certain they stink, and the psychiatrists who sense this may be a disorder

We've all known of people who have bad body odour but don't know it. It turns out there are people with the opposite problem; they only think they smell:

Patients with the proposed diagnosis of "olfactory reference disorder" (sometimes referred to as a "syndrome") are certain beyond doubt that they stink, when in fact they smell no worse than is average for a 21st century American. According to Dr. Katharine Phillips, director of Rhode Island Hospital's Body Image Program, four in 10 people who likely have the disorder have sought out medical treatments for what they believe to be bad breath, foul body odor, stinky feet or residual fecal or urine smell. Their worry preoccupies them for between three and eight hours a day, on average, and impels patients to shower for hours, consume bars of soap or gallons of mouthwash in a single day -- even to drink perfume in an effort to eradicate the imagined smell.

A slight majority -- 60% -- of sufferers appear to be women, Phillips told her colleagues, and most began to suspect that they emitted foul odors at around 15 to 16 years of age.

Clearly, this is not something author Lionel Shriver suffers from. (See her mention of how her dislike of clothes washing leads her to wear the same clothes for a week, despite her cycling everywhere.) Call me weird, but my description of her as "quite the oddball" at another blog yesterday, when she says in the same interview that she is "eccentric" and thought of as "peculiar," seems entirely apt.

Worth a look

Nitro PDF Reader out to blow away Adobe

This appears to be little more than a PR blurb for some new .pdf software, but it does sound worth a look:

Nitro not only lets people read paperwork scanned in Portable Document Format (PDF) but lets it be annotated, filled-in, or otherwise altered and then saved as files.

Adobe's widely used free reader lets people see and print digitized documents but not tinker with them, a restriction that can foil efforts such as filling in emailed or online PDF forms.

One thing I really hate about the .pdf forms that government websites sometimes provide is how, if you need to put in more words than the box allows, it just keeps reducing the size of the font until it's unreadable. Maybe use of Nitro allows a way around this?

UPDATE: here's the link to the Nitro reader site. It does look pretty good and innovative, but I haven't tried it yet.

Martin Gardner - a belief ignored

The Great Beyond: RIP Martin Gardner

So Martin Gardner, who is well known and respected in skeptic circles, has died at the age of 95.

Apart from his long running maths columns in Scientific American, he is best known for his work “discrediting scientific fraud and quackery”. This means, for example, that he is getting favourable and sympathetic comments from rabid atheist PZ Myers and his followers.

Yet, few people are noting in detail that, despite his generally skeptical take on life, Gardner never became an atheist, and wrote an entire book in which he justified his "philosophical theism."

The book is "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener", and I do have a yellowing copy on my bookshelf. As someone who wrote a review at Amazon explains:

Gardner is a "fideist," meaning that he acknowledges the impossibility of demonstrating rationally the existence of God and related issues, but insisting that faith is an appropriate mechanism for getting around these difficulties. Gardner is never heavy-handed or preachy in his positions, and he gives the arguments against him a fair hearing.

That's a position I basically agree with, and as such I did find it a very good read. Gardner did not go so far as to believe in Christianity, but his position is one that I think any thoughtful Christian could call a very reasonable "fall-back" position.

What I find a little curious, though, is how in atheist circles, like PZ Myers' blog, this aspect of Gardner seems to be being ignored, or at least downplayed. I don't really see why Gardner's views, and his deep faith in "faith", so to speak, should not be the subject of the same ridicule that Catholics and other Christians have faced from Myers. Maybe he just hasn't read the book.

In fact, I am a little curious as to whether Gardner in his later years, was starting to get a bit indignant about the aggression of the "new atheism".

Someone else has already noted that the New York Times obituary paints his religious belief quite misleadingly, if you have read his "Whys.." book. I suspect it is one of his least read, but most deserving, works.

Strangest consequence of 9/11

9/11 attacks linked to loss of male babies | e! Science News

This is a very surprising story:

The stress caused by psychological shock from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, felt even by people with no direct link to the event, may have led to an increased number of male children being miscarried in the US. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Public Health found that the fetal death rate for boys spiked in September 2001, and that significantly fewer boys than expected were born in December of that year...

Bruckner and his colleagues used data from the National Vital Statistics System, which compiles fetal death data from all fifty states of the US, from January 1996 to December 2002 to calculate how many male fetal losses would be expected in a 'normal' September. They found that in September 2001, this figure was significantly exceeded. Speaking about the reasons for this, Bruckner said, "Across many species, stressful times reportedly reduce the male birth rate. This is commonly thought to reflect some mechanism conserved by natural selection to improve the mother's overall reproductive success."

A good comment

A woman writes a really long piece in the Guardian about how much she hated the first Sex and the City movie, even though she loved the series. She thinks the second movie looks even worse, going by the trailer.

This is a topic of mild interest to me, given that I still find it hard to believe that so many women felt that a show about gay men played by women was deep and meaningful. But my favourite comment following the article is this:

At college I wrote essays about the cultural significance of shows like Friends and Frasier, even Dawson's effing Creek.

Then I became an adult.

Read a book, love.

UPDATE: well, yeah, I should be reading a book, but if David Edelstein's take is anything to go by, I will have the pleasure of reading many bad reviews and bitchy comments soon:

The film is an epic eyesore. It’s as if they set out to make a movie that said, “You’re right! We are hideous!” It begins with the nightmarish manic gaiety of Mamma Mia!, with strenuous lockjawed smiles that make you think you’re watching stroke victims. Then Liza Minnelli shows up to perform a gay marriage. Heralded (and hooted at) as the embodiment of camp unreality, she looks more human—nervous but happy to belong somewhere—than the four leads....

Amy Odell, of nymag.com’s The Cut, accompanied me to the screening and was kind enough to whisper that a particular dress of Carrie’s cost 50 grand. But what’s the point of spending that much when the cinematographer, John Thomas, lights Sarah Jessica Parker to bring out the leatheriness of her skin? How did he manage to mummify the lovely Cynthia Nixon? Kim Cattrall, fresh off her witty, subtle work in The Ghost Writer, is costumed to look like a cross between (late) Mae West and (dead) Bea Arthur. Kristin Davis gets by (just) pulling little-girl faces, probably for the last time.

Journalists: look, over here!

I could have missed it in the Australian press, but as far as I can see from Googling, only the ABC has mentioned the important Nature paper that came out last week on ocean warming.

What is wrong with our journalists? For years they re-printed any press release regarding the more dubious possible effects of climate change, without any sign of independent thought at all. Then, when AGW skeptics use such reports as alleged evidence that global warming is not to be believed at all, the journalists say "oh yeah, we'll be rather quiet now for a while." (I guess I have put my finger on the problem with that bit about "no independent thought".)

All at a time when in fact it looks increasingly clear that:

a. "climategate" is not going to reveal any fundamental problem with the temperature record;

b. the issue of "missing heat" is more of a technical one about the difficulties of measuring ocean heat content;

c. increasing ocean heat content is pretty consistent with the models on the bigger scale, just as climate change is something that has to be looked at on the bigger scale.

Anyhow, important commentary on the ocean warming paper is to be found at Real Climate, and John Cook has a really good post about it with links that get around the Nature paywall so you can read directly the commentary by Trenberth.

My fantasy politics

Not much choice between Robopol and Terminator | The Australian

This article by Niki Savva expresses my sentiments perfectly, and helps explain why I haven't been saying much about politics here lately. Everyone with political common sense can see what's happened in Australia in the last six months, and what the cure would be: a joint address to the nation by the administrative leaders of each the major political parties in which they admit and agree:

"1. We're terribly sorry, we've both made terrible, terrible mistakes in the selection of our current leaders. Yes, we know, we're not blind: the Labor Party always knew Kevin was a jerk who faked his way into the job, but we were surprised how long it took the public to realise it. Everyone already knows Tony doesn't really want the job and is too full of self doubt and anxiety that only goes away when he is on bicycle. They are both completely hopeless as leaders, and all reasonable people, even within their own parties, can see that.

2. We've agreed, and there will be no point scoring between us: Malcolm, all is forgiven, and you can have your party back. Julia, your political appeal is undeniable, and have the Prime Ministership now; not in another 2 or 3 years of bloodless meandering by K Rudd.

3. OK, now that we know we have a real contest, let the election campaigning begin."

Still not enjoying it

Doctor Who review: Vampires of Venice - Telegraph

Well, it's good to see it's not just me. A considerable number of comments following the above review of this week's episode agree that there is just something "off" about this season's Dr Who. As commenter "Mike" says:

I do agree there's a problem with the new doctor. I can't decide what annoys me more, his occasioanl and completely unexplained rages, or the inconsistent plot lines where you're left wondering if a led to be and then to g whether you'd dropped off through c, d,e and f. It's a shame, you can't blame the cast, they're trying their best, but the writing and direction isn't working. Maybe steven should just direct from now on and have someone else write.

Pity really.

They have to get out more...

Taste Test: Passion fruit - Boing Boing

Boing Boing runs a story by someone who has only recently discovered passionfruit? As an Australian says in comments: "I had no idea passionfruit was so little-known".
(Several comments are also about how gross the insides look - like frogs eggs. They make your average Australian seem like a regular Anthony Bourdain.)

UPDATE: I mentioned this to my wife over the weekend, only to be told that she had eaten frog's eggs, as a dessert, at an expensive Chinese restaurant in Japan...

Lane on Robin

“Robin Hood,” review : The New Yorker

Anthony Lane's review of the new Robin Hood begins in amusingly bitchy fashion:

Our hero is one Robin Longstride, played by Russell Crowe, who seems a bit short for the name; it suggests someone rangy, whereas the dauntless persona that Crowe has constructed, over many films, owes less to his gait than to his lightly submerged temper and his bearish build. The solution would have been to call him Robin Phonethrow, but Scott has a thing for historical details, so I guess that didn’t wash.

Overall, his impression of the film as too dour and serious is similar to that in many reviews, and puts me off seeing it.

I am a bit surprised how so many reviewers of the new movie mention in passing how bad the Kevin Costner version was.  Yes, his accent was hopeless out of the place, but I thought RH Prince of Thieves was still quite fun and enjoyable in its way.  Certainly sounds a better experience than this present take.

Small nuclear update

Miniature Nuclear Plants Seek Approval to Work in U.S (Update1) - BusinessWeek

Maybe not too much new in this story, except for the fact that development of small scale nuclear power is proceeding, but with government certification of them not even started yet.

His "sustaining fantasy" is that he is worth reading

ABC The Drum Unleashed - Sustaining fantasy

Bob Ellis, who always now gives me the impression of writing under the influence of a bottle of red, writes of the "sustaining fantasies" that people use to get through life. It contains pearls such as this:

We are told a priest who buggers choir boys can eat Christ's flesh on our behalf and save us a billion years of fiery torture thereby, though he himself will suffer a trillion of fiery torture for buggering choir boys against God's will though God, who is all powerful, neglected to prevent him from doing this, a God who loves us all. And some of us believe that too.

I'm fairly certain it's been quite a while since he looked into Catholic theology.

And there is a distinct sense of self justification for past behaviour in this section:

We are told there are faithful husbands who spend months each year travelling the world. Who are they? I would like to see a list of ten names. Yet we base our notion of civilised society on this premise and sack our politicians if they don't live up to it. What a fantastical premise it is and how useless it is to believe it.

Adultery has been frequent since the invention of the bicycle and very, very frequent since the invention of the Pill and the universal availability of cheap interstate air travel and we should probably work out how to cope with it, in rules that won't be easy to construct. But denying it happens or saying it won't happen in particular cases is ludicrous fantasy.

It's easier to give up smoking. The wife-swapping parties of the 1950s and '60s (so well evoked in The Ice Storm) seem wiser now than they did then and the destructive, child-smashing divorces of today a moronic alternative.

Yes Bob, but I wonder what your past partners think about this.